


i get by

by softlyblue



Series: it can't get no worse [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Dissociation, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Panic Attacks, Recovery, TW for the crystals and all they imply, can be read as Pre-Slash Fjord/Caleb (somehow), set before "it gets better" but can be read as standalone, veth loves caleb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 00:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29341299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlyblue/pseuds/softlyblue
Summary: “Bren,” Veth whispers, and the nurses grouped in the door like bubbles watch on, “It’s Veth.” She climbs onto the chair by the bed and touches his elbow, very, very gently. “You said you wanted to see me.”Across his cheek, so small she might have missed it, she sees a tear escape his eye and fall from his skin to the hospital pillow below him. “Hello, old friend,” he says in a voice that rasps sandpaper, “It is good to see you. I’m sorry it’s been so long.”
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Caduceus Clay & Caleb Widogast, Fjord & Caleb Widogast, Nott | Veth Brenatto & Caleb Widogast, The Mighty Nein - Relationship
Series: it can't get no worse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2151222
Comments: 30
Kudos: 151





	i get by

**Author's Note:**

> oh my god!! when i wrote the first part to this i was like, hey, ive been binging c2 and really enjoying it, i'll just post this little doodle and be about my business, and everyone was so so so kind that i was overcome with more inspiration than i've had in, like, a year. or more. i have actual work to do but no, no, ive been sitting on my couch doing this for two days instead. 
> 
> disclaimer/tw: caleb's crystals & all they imply are more heavily featured in the first part, scattered throughout all of it, but for all who want to read and skip the one quite explicitly crystal-heavy scene, go from: "Get _what_ out?" to "blood on her nose". 
> 
> also: i am not, like, a shipper of anything in the show to a heavy degree? essek and caleb are cute, jester and everyone are cute, and beauyasha makes me want to die a slow death, but fjord kept arriving during the wip and being really really gay. so. somehow, SOMEHOW this has become potential pre-slash for widofjord. im as confused as you are.

Veth Brenatto, née Smyth, has worked hard for the things she has now in life. She fought hard for her husband until she knew she had him, and she battled for her son until she felt him a weight in her arms, and she worked day in and night out and three jobs until she could put down the first payment on the house, and she and Yeza painted the whole thing themselves and ruined their overalls, and ate takeaway on the floor, and when they first lit the fire in the grate Veth felt for the first time as though she was stable. She felt for the first time as though she had foundations strong enough to _build._

“My turn to put him to bed,” Yeza says quietly, around half past eight on a Thursday night. Both of them have had at least one glass of wine, although Veth’s had two, one with dinner and one nursed on her lap, and they’ve watched half an hour of cartoons with Luc until he’d fallen asleep between them, his little body toppled onto his father’s. He’s into Robin Hood right now, and he’s got a brown tea-towel wrapped around his waist to look like Little John. “See you in a bit. Wish me luck.”

Veth kisses him on the cheek, his stubble against her lips. He’s thinner than her, with a longer face, and at times like tonight the colour of the wine goes straight to his face and makes him splotch red, like he has paint on his cheeks. “Good luck. I think I left the bedtime story under his pillow.”

Yeza makes a face, but he stands and picks Luc up without much fuss, and Veth quietly turns down the sound on the TV. “Love you.”

“Love you,” Veth mouths, and as Yeza heads up the stairs with his sleeping son, Veth moves into the kitchen to pour them both another glass of wine. It’s been a good week for the shop, and she feels pleasantly exhausted by her work and by her son; the wine is in her head, making everything feel a little bit pillowed, and she imagines if she was younger she could curl up on the floor and sleep. She won’t. But she could. 

When the phone rings, it startles her badly, and her grip on the wine bottle slips from the glass to her shirt for a second; she swears, and then grabs her mobile before the sound can pierce Luc’s sleepy evening. “Hello?” She hisses without checking the caller ID, rushing to shut the door from the kitchen to the rest of the house, “Beau, is that you?”

 _“I’m sorry,”_ says a pleasant, completely unfamiliar voice, _“Is this Veth Smyth? This is the Melora Green Free Hospital. Are you free to talk?”_

Veth, still dabbing at the wine stain on the front of her top, feels an awful sinking feeling in her stomach, the usual one that comes with something unexpected. “I - I - yeah, yeah I am. This is Veth - Veth Brenatto. Is everything okay? Is someone hurt?” _Is someone hurt. Stupid. Of course someone’s hurt._

The voice on the end of the phone clears their throat. _“We’ve been given your name by a young man who’s just come into our care. Do you know a Bren Ermendrud, or is that name familiar to you at all?”_

“Br- _Bren?”_ And Veth really does sink down onto the floor, sitting against one of the wood cabinets, shifting her phone to her other hand, “Do you mean - do you - yes, yeah, yeah, I know him - knew him-”

_“This is a unique situation, Ms Smyth-”_

“Brenatto,” Veth corrects on automatic, watching the candle on the kitchen table ribbon every time she speaks, the flame struggling in the face of her blowing breath, “I - yeah, sure it is.”

_“I appreciate this must be a shock. Would you be available to come to the hospital?”_

“I-”

 _“Whenever you can,”_ and the disembodied phone voice sounds a little more nervous, _“It really is a… well, it’s best explained here. I appreciate that this is very short notice. We were given your name, and recommended to call you as soon as possible.”_

“Give me half an hour,” Veth says, and hangs up. 

Yeza’s downstairs again and standing in the doorway, the bottle of wine in his hand, looking at her questioningly. He’s so handsome. He’s smaller than her, twitchier than any other halfling Veth’s had the pleasure of knowing, and his hair is longer now than when she first met him and he ties it back from his clean-shaven face, and the candlelight shines unevenly on his long, thin nose and his pale mouth, unnatural colours sparking in his dark eyes. He has a little red mark on his cheek from where Luc fell asleep on him, earlier, and his shirt is crumpled. “Who was that, honey?”

“The hospital,” Veth says, and stands, and lists forward, catching herself against the cabinet. “I… do you remember me talking - do you remember when I told you about that old friend of mine? Bren, from way way back?”

“Uh-” Yeza sets the bottle on the floor and comes over to her, taking her hands, “Are you okay? The hospital? D’you mean the… the kid that went away to… study? The… I thought you and him broke apart?”

“He got a scholarship,” Veth says hoarsely, “After his parents died. House fire. Tragic. Tragic accident. He… _god,_ that would have been years ago. He moved away around the time of our wedding, I think - before it, yeah, because I sent him the invitation and it… it came back. Return to sender. Never heard anything from him since. Yeah. So that’s five years ago - five years ago. Oh, my god.”

“And he’s in the _hospital?_ And he rang _you?”_

“I have to go,” Veth tears her ands out of his and then swears, “I’ve had two _fucking_ glasses of wine - shit-”

“I’ll call Beauregard,” Yeza says, turning away from her with the phone already pressed to his cheek, “It’ll be okay. It’ll be okay.”

“Yeah,” Veth says, swiping again at the wine stain on her shirt, “Yeah, for sure. It’ll be fine.”

It is not fine. 

Beau picks her up thirty-four minutes after the phone call, and doesn’t even get out of the car, just leaves the engine idling, the radio speaking in muffled tones through the metal body. “Ring me when you get the time,” Yeza says, kind, wonderful Yeza, and apart from his twiddling fingers Veth wouldn’t even know he was anxious, although the feeling pulses through his body with the blood. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Veth tells him, and gets into the car, and pulls the seatbelt down over the wine on her top, and turns to Beau, “Thank you for coming.”

“I was at the Soul anyway, so no worries,” Beau shrugs, a mess of energy rolling from her shoulders to her fingertips drumming on the steering wheel, “Some big case cracked today. I wasn’t, like, _involved,_ but dude. I ended up doing so much fucking paperwork. _So_ much fucking paperwork. Some corruption or other in the Assembly, some doctor gone fuckin’ rouge. Where is it, the Melora Green?”

Veth just nods, her eyes vacant, the radio the only thing keeping her here.

_“-thon, who rose to prominence last year after his breakthrough with crystal technology. The Cerberus Assembly released a statement claiming no knowledge of his other activities, although crystal-harnessing technology is still in development, and plants across the Zemni Fields have been called on for statements regarding the controversial nature of their discovery, which all have denied to give. The situation is ongoing. This station has learned of at least one on-site casualty, and at least one individual in critical condition, who was airlifted to a nearby hospital two hours ago. At this time, we do not know the whereabouts of-”_

“Dude, Veth,” Beau reaches out and turns down the station, the car idling at a red light, “What exactly is this? Like, you know I’ll help you, and Yasha knows where I am and all, but is this like - what’s going on? Should I be worried about you? Should I have called an ambulance?”

“Not about me,” Veth says. She pulls at the fabric of her tights, stretched across her folded knee. “I got a call about… about a guy I used to know.”

“Like a guy? Or a _guy?”_

“Just an old friend,” Veth smiles a little out the window, although she hasn’t thought of Bren in years, ever since the wedding invitation was rejected. Purposefully pushed him from her mind, like all the rest of her broken childhood relationships, her brothers, her parents, her friends. “I knew him when we were teenagers. We were pretty close. He got a scholarship funded by the Assembly, right around the time I met Yeza and we started up the shop, and I guess… well, I never saw him again, after that, but I guess he just got busy. I sent him an invite to the wedding and all, but it got returned to me, and then… I looked for him on Facebook a few times, but I guess he doesn’t use it. I haven’t thought about him in years. But they called me, the hospital, and they said - they said they couldn’t explain on the phone, but it’d be best if I came there.”

The light turns green. Beau changes gear and then shifts her hand to Veth’s shoulder. “You’re a fucking great friend, you know that?” 

The Melora Green Free Hospital is near Fjord’s university, up on one of the twin hills the city is built around. The car park is busier than Veth remembers it, when she was coming in and out around the time Luc was born, and weirdly enough there’s TV vans parked all around the ambulance entrance, and clubs of reporters in red two-pieces and boom microphones, buzzing around like bees with no flowers. 

“Weird,” Beau makes a face, helping Veth jump down from the human-sized car before she locks it, “Who d’you think stubbed their toe for all _that_ bullshit?” 

Veth shrugs. The hospital always makes her feel a bit sick, anxious inside, and reminds her of all the harried appointments she attended, all the stressful _will-he-won’t-he_ as they watched Luc on the monitor, his little hands clutching amniotic fluid, his little heart thrumming hard enough to keep him. “Will you come in with me?”

“‘Course,” Beau shrugs easily, although she rearranges her Cobalt Soul badge on her belt to push it into clearer view, “‘Course I will.” 

Inside the hospital is busy, too, and there are two policemen by the door that give Veth a _look,_ and might have stopped her if Beau wasn’t beside her, flashing her badge all over the show. “Give me a moment,” Veth says, pressing her hand to Beau’s elbow, and then she turns to the front desk. 

There’s the usual platform for the smaller folk to stand on, and when she hops onto it to get in view of the secretary, the pale elf man looks surprised. “Can I help you?” He asks, careful, structured, as though Veth is somehow invading a place she shouldn’t be.

“I got a call about half an hour ago,” she says, pushing away the feeling that she shouldn’t _be here,_ “Uh, about an old friend? I’m here for… y’know, I have no idea what I’m here for.”

“Do you have a name?” The elf man starts clicking through his monitor, one eyebrow arched. 

“Shit, sorry,” Veth colours, “Uh, yeah. Bren? Bren Ermendrud?”

And his whole face turns slack - if his cheeks could pale any further, they would. “Oh, _sh-”_ he covers his mouth with three curling fingers, “Okay, okay, that’s fine. And is she with you as well?”

“Monk of the Cobalt Soul,” Beau says, leaning against the desk, her dark elbow on the shiny white plastic, “Yeah. Sure.” 

Veth and Beau are moved quite rapidly after that, into the lift with a man in a crumpled white shirt that smells of coffee and desperation, and when they land on the corridor she assumes Bren will be waiting it is empty. Wholly, eerily empty. “What the fuck has your friend landed in?” Beau asks, peering around, ignoring the man, _“How_ long ago did you say you saw him?”

“Five years,” Veth says hoarsely. She’s thoroughly freaked out now, and careening straight towards blind panic; she wants to be at home, wine-drunk with her husband. “Give or take.”

“Ms Brenatto?” A woman dressed almost identically to the man in the lift comes out of a door, her face visibly brightening when she sees Veth and Beau, “Oh, and - Expositor Lionett, right?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Beau says, shifting uneasily, recognition in her voice, “Is this, like, a police thing?”

The woman ignores her and looks straight at Veth, while the man in the lift heads down the corridor, far past them them, on his phone now and talking about _extractions_ and _the chopper_ like a bad film. “I’m sorry to shock you like this, Ms Brenatto, but - how much do you know about the… current situation with Trent Ikithon?”

“The Cerberus mage?” Veth frowns, “What situation?”

The woman rubs her hand down her face. “Oh, _ye gods._ Okay. Not your fault. Sorry. Been a long day. Okay. So Bren Ermendrud… has recently, like three-hours-ago recently, been… extracted from a long-term traumatic environment. We only got his name out of him about an hour ago and he’s been - he’s - the ward clerics can do very little for him. We asked him if he knew anyone, if we could call anyone for support, and he gave us your name. Well. Veth Smyth. We…” she sways, and leans against the wall, “Would you believe there were three of us going through the yellow pages for about twenty minutes before we found you? Thank _god_ you haven’t changed your phone number.”

“Ikithon,” Beau mutters, “Fucking _shit._ The house? Fuck. This guy was in there?”

The woman nods grimly. “Yeah. I think he’s out again. He… I don’t know. You probably know just as much as me, to be honest. Ms Brenatto, are you okay?”

“I want to see him,” Veth whispers, her mind feeding her one horrible scenario after another, each far worse than the last.

When at last she’s allowed in to see Bren, it’s something of an understatement. He looks pretty much as she remembers him; a little older, his face more mature, his cheeks hollower and his skin the unhealthy shade of grey she’s only ever seen on medical dramas on TV. His hair is long and lanky and brittle, and badly-cut, and there’s a new piercing in his right ear, and both his arms are lying above the blankets he’s tucked under; they’re soaked in healing cuts and scars, surgical in their neat lines, in various stages of healing. His eyes are squeezed shut and his breathing is quick and shallow, and his head is tilted away from the IV drip feeding into his left arm, as though he can’t bear to see it. “Bren,” Veth whispers, and the nurses grouped in the door like bubbles watch on, “It’s Veth.” She climbs onto the chair by the bed and touches his elbow, very, very gently. “You said you wanted to see me.”

Across his cheek, so small she might have missed it, she sees a tear escape his eye and fall from his skin to the hospital pillow below him. “Hello, old friend,” he says in a voice that rasps sandpaper, “It is good to see you. I’m sorry it’s been so long.”

Veth doesn’t go home that night. She’s curled up on the floor of the bathroom in Bren’s hospital room, blue roll pressed to her cheeks so the tears don’t stain her clothes, talking to Yeza so she doesn’t choke. “He’s so fucked up, honey,” she manages. Bren is asleep. 

_“Veth…”_ Yeza sounds reedy and exhausted. Tomorrow is Friday, and on Fridays Marius comes into the shop and both Veth and Yeza get a day off, and Veth thinks they’ll spend it sleeping in front of the TV, _“Do you need to be there? You haven’t seen him in five years. Do you… do you want to come home?”_

Veth sits and struggles to unite the two desires wrapping themselves around her heart. “I do, believe me,” she says, “But he - I _missed_ him. He needs someone on his side right now. He’s… something really awful’s happened to him. Beau’s talking to the detectives now. Have you seen the news?”

_“Only the bust at that mage’s house.”_

“Yeah. That.”

Yeza swears loudly, holding the phone away from him as though that’ll stop Veth from hearing it. _“Jesus. That - someone’s_ dead, _Veth!”_

“Bren isn’t.”

_“Fuck.”_

“I love you, honey.”

_“I love you, too.”_

When Bren wakes up on Friday afternoon, Veth is there. She went home in the morning for a few hours, a nap and a coffee and a cry on her husband’s shoulder, and a hug with Luc to remind herself he’s still there, and then she drove to the hospital on her own. She’s a big girl. She doesn’t need her hand held. “Hey,” she says when his eyes finally focus on her, Bren, you awake?”

He flinches minutely at the name, and his hands flutter and then rest on the sheet. “I am,” he says, once this is performed, “I thought… Why are you here? I haven’t seen you in years.”

“You asked for me, apparently,” Veth says, watching him with careful eyes, “I haven’t seen you, either. You okay?”

It is a funny question to ask, it seems. Bren descends into laughter, and then further into coughing, and then stills with an abruptness that scares her. “I’m fine.”

The ward clerics are at the closed door again, but Bren seems to be one of those cases where all the medical procedures Veth had seen on TV goes out the window, and they don’t come in. One of them, a tall drow woman, looks at her and waits for Veth’s nod before there’s a general dispersal. “There’s a lot of them,” Bren says, following Veth’s gaze, “A lot… more.”

“Bren,” Veth says, out of a lack of anything else to say, and again there’s the flinch. “I - I’m sorry, am I saying something wrong?”

“It is me,” Bren murmurs. He’s Zemnian in origin, and although when Veth knew him his accent was light, it seems to have returned with a vengeance, added an uncertainty to his voice, “I… it is that name.”

“..Were you... Called something else?”

But he’s gone. When Veth leaves to get a sandwich from the vending machine, she returns to two nurses velcro-strapping Bren’s wrists to the bars alongside his hospital bed; he’s been scratching at his arms, they explain, hard enough to do real damage. Fresh blood has been sponged off his skin, but it’s swelling up again. 

“I have to pick my kid up from nursery,” Veth says, and has a panic attack in her car. 

On Saturday morning she fends off a call from Beau, who’s spent all Friday in the Cobalt Soul and is probably now the world expert on Dr Ikithon, ex-politician current-criminal, who’s ringing to ask if Veth wants another lift. “I’ll be fine,” she says, still in bed, Yeza snoring with his head pillowed on her bare stomach, “I’ll be fine.”

She makes banana toast for Luc, who tells her about Robin Hood for the thousandth time and how Robin Hood had a fight with sticks like Beauregard, _did you know that, mama?_ And then she makes a coffee for herself, and brushes Luc’s hair before he gets slime in it or banana in it or snot in it, and then she kisses him on the forehead and tells him they’re gonna go wake daddy up right now. 

“Oh - hey!” Yeza jolts awake when the weight of his wife and his son hit him square in the stomach, and the Brenatto family are tangled in duvets, and Luc is giggling. “Hey, honey,” Yeza says over her head, “What - what’s the plan today?”

“I’m gonna ring Deucy,” Veth says, and does. 

Caduceus Clay is someone she was introduced to through Fjord, of all people, who met him at one of the Wildmother’s ceremonies up at the university. He’s a grief and bereavement therapist during the day, and a member of a vegetarian commune that lives in a block of carbon-positive flats during his off hours, and there’s nobody Veth would trust more with this than him. 

_“Hey, Veth,”_ he says when she calls him, _“Nice hearing your voice. Beau said you might be ringing me.”_

“Yeah,” Veth worries at a strip of loose skin on her thumb, and stares out her kitchen window at the little garden of green behind the house, “Yeah, I guessed she would. Listen, are you free later?”

_“‘Course I am.”_

“Great. I have someone I think you’d like to meet.”

“Ms Brenatto, Bren’s _very unstable_ right now,” says one of the social workers that have taken residence on Bren’s corridor since Friday morning; not the man _or_ the woman from Thursday night, but one of their flock. “I would advise against introducing more new elements into-”

“Pleased to meet you,” Caduceus rumbles, more like a force of nature than any kind of person, thrusting his paw forward for the social worker to shake, “I’m Dr Clay, of the Blooming Grove?”

“Oh,” the social worker blinks, her world resetting, fitting Caduceus under _doctor_ instead of _member of the public,_ “Okay.”

A hierarchy is beginning to develop on Bren’s corridor which is mildly amusing to Veth. The nurses who were on-shift on Thursday evening to see him come in are at the top of the pecking order, but Veth is just below them due to the length of her stay here, and the later a body arrived into the microcosm of carers around him, the lesser they’re considered. Hilariously, Caduceus isn’t stopped again until they’re at Bren’s door, when Veth puts her hand as high on him as she can reach - his waist - and clears her throat. “He’s really fucked up,” she says, “I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I don’t even know what’s happened to him. But he’s really fucked up. I don’t even know if he’ll remember me visiting him.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Caduceus says, and walks right on in, and Veth scurries after him as though she might be forgotten. 

She and Caduceus sit in silence as the sun shines her way across the sky, in through the hospital window, illuminating the dust that spirals through the air in the room. Bren is not asleep, but neither is he awake; his eyes are open and staring at the ceiling, and his breath is quick and panicked, and his wrists are still velcroed away from his arms, and he doesn’t respond to his name. 

They’ve been sitting for two hours when Bren turns his head to look at Caduceus. “You are new,” he says, and then, “It’s been the required time, you know. If I don’t take them out now they’ll go bad.” His eyes, though, are still misty and unfocused, and Veth knows what whoever he’s seeing isn’t a big white firbolg with his hair plaited down his back. 

“I’ve taken them out already,” Caduceus says calmly, comfortably, “Don’t worry about that. Bren, yes?”

And again Bren reacts; his head flies back and his body spasms for a second, and Veth thinks that if he weren’t restrained, he would be back at his skin with a vengeance. 

Caduceus hums for a moment, and folds his paws on top of one another. Then, he shrugs. “Ask him if he wants to be called something else,” he whispers to Veth, in a voice that he probably _thinks_ is a whisper, “If you don’t mind.”

Veth hops down from her chair and touches Bren on the shoulder, mindful of the way his face flies from hers as though the touch will hurt. “What do you want me to call you?” she asks. The sun highlights all the places the colour should be in his cheeks. 

Bren sighs. He’s looking at something in the space between the bed and the door; something that isn’t there. “I thought they were coming to get me,” he tells this space, softly, like a confession, “When I was young… I had a friend. An imaginary friend. He was called Caleb.”

“Caleb,” Veth says, and he turns to look at her, and focuses, and, “Caleb,” she says again. 

_“Hallo,”_ he rasps, “Veth? You look… happy. Your hair is longer than it used to be.”

“Yes it is,” she says, and flattens her palm against his cheek, “So is yours.”

Caduceus kneels at the foot of the bed and, with the green whiteboard marker they’ve used to fill in the patient details, he swipes out _Bren_ and writes _Caleb_ instead. “Well done, Veth,” he tells her, “Now go home. Go to bed. Please?”

On Sunday, Veth stays at home. She and Luc make a cake, and when Yeza returns from the shop they surprise him with it, and they watch _Robin Hood,_ the version where Robin is a fox, and Luc puts on his little green hat and chants every single one of Robin’s lines by rote. Yeza has a glass of wine, and pours one for her, too, but she doesn’t drink it. Eventually she pours it down the sink. 

They go to bed. 

Over the next week, Caleb meets Beau and Fjord, although half of the time he addresses Beau as Astrid and Fjord as Wulf, and then Veth goes to the door and quietly tells this to the cleric on the ward, who pages one of the detectives still hanging around the hospital, and the information spreads like tension through a spiderweb, like ripples in the ocean. He drifts in and out of coherency, spending hours staring at the ceiling, spending further hours crying silently and with terrifying depth, as though there are no end to the tears he has inside him and no need to make a sound, and then further hours in restless movement, trying to claw at himself, to _get them out,_ he screams, and the clerics come when Veth hits the panic button and she feels like a fraud when she sees him realise he’s being spelled-upon, and the betrayal, the horrific resignation on his face, because it’s happened before and nobody ever asked him if they could before they did. 

“Get _what_ out?” She cries desperately, during one such fit, her small hand on his right shoulder and Beau leaning most of her weight on his legs, doing nothing for Caleb’s desperate, spasming panic, “What! What! Maybe we _can!”_

“He left them in me when he went,” Caleb tells her, “He left them-” and with a strength that shocks her, with a pulse of power through his anemic body and his brittle, sun-starved bones, he rips his arm from her grip and tears his blunt fingernails down the skin of his left forearm with such ferocity that the thin, much-opened skin does so without a fuss. 

Blood throbs onto the hospital sheets and Veth starts shouting and Beau starts grabbing, but that only makes Caleb more aggressive, more desperate. His fingers plunge into the opened cuts, widening them, and there’s horrible noises that Veth thinks about for days after, and he’s screaming even as he does it - he is not immune to pain. His thumb burrows into himself in a twisting, screwdriver motion, flicking up periodically and sending droplets of blood into the air and onto the blankets. He finds nothing, or at least, nothing _yet,_ and he becomes more frantic, and Beau is shouting now, absolute nonsense - _Caleb, you fucking moron, stop! Stop! Stop it!_ \- and then, in out-breaths, yelling for a cleric or a healer or a nurse or _anyone, fucking come here! Come on, we’ve only got four fucking arms!_

After what feels like a millenia, leaning on him, shouting at him, Veth is thrust aside by a pair of blue-gloved hands. Caleb is still shouting for them to _get it out! get it out! get them out!_ And babbling in Zemnian, words Veth can’t parse through the sobs. 

“Fucking hell,” Beau says, also on the floor. Her eyes are wide white pools in her face, and there’s blood on her nose. 

“It was an experiment,” Caleb says. 

It’s three days later. Veth is sitting on his bed, because she’s discovered that the closer she is to him, the more present he stays; it’s like he needs weight, needs the metal ball on the rubber sheet, needs something to gravitate towards. She’s holding one of his hands, and he’s letting her, and his face is a little less grey, and he remembers her name most days, and he knows Beau - he knows Caduceus. 

“An experiment,” Veth repeats. Rubs her thumb over his knuckles. 

“He-” Caleb has never said his name, not aloud, and Veth has followed suit, although Beau isn’t as great at remembering not to let it slip. “He developed new ways of, of, of enhancing magical power. For people, yes, and for objects of the arcane. Of new energy. He told us we… were pioneers. We were… following in the footsteps of great inventors of the past. Thomas Edison electrocuted himself, do you know?”

“Yeah,” Veth says, although she hadn’t. She does the practical stuff; Yeza’s into theory. She likes chasing the high of creation, of reinventing the wheel over and over and over again. 

Caleb blinks. It’s taking him a lot of effort to tell her this, she can see it, although he isn’t crying - and he doesn’t cry, not often. He drifts. Alone on a restless sea. “He did it to us at first, you see, but as our skills grew we would practice on each other. The crystals. _My_ crystals. Attuned, yes? And disinfect between each use. We were working on a new breakthrough that would… make them permanent. We… I was going to do it, _ja?_ I was going to put them in and sew it up so they wouldn’t fall out. You see. They nestle in. If they sit long enough, the muscle grows over them. They were so deep, so deep to get to the magic in us, in our blood. Do you see?”

“They’re gone, Caleb,” Veth says, struggling with the nausea in her throat, “The doctors took them out.” 

_(We removed twenty-nine crystals from him the night he was admitted,_ one of his social workers tells her, _They’re in evidence right now, with the police. If I tell him he needs them for - for therapy, for recovery, they can’t really say anything against that._

 _Keep them away from him,_ Veth says with all the assurance in the world, _Never, ever, ever let him see them again.)_

“I missed your wedding,” Caleb murmurs. His eyes slip shut. “The orc… the green fellow told me about your son.”

“Luc,” Veth can’t help the smile in her voice when she thinks about him, aiming and firing suction-cup arrows all over the house, pinned to the fridge, and the picture that hangs over their fireplace, Yeza and Veth with Luc between them, all wearing matching yellow jumpers. “You would like him. He would like you.”

Caleb laughs, but there’s no humour there. “You tell a kind lie, Veth. Will you tell me about it?”

“About what?”

“About your wedding. About - about -” He’s forgotten, Veth realises, and he doesn’t want to admit it, and when he was young he was so proud of his memory. It earned him the scholarship that took him away, after all. 

“Yeza,” she says quietly. 

“Yeza,” he repeats, ugly red staining his colourless cheeks, “Yes, _ja, ja,_ Yeza.” 

“Well, it was very cold,” she begins. 

It was very cold, because it was February and they decided to have their wedding in the snow, half of the ceremony outside and the rest indoors, and then they were chased inside early by the rain and had to complete their vows in front of the haggard venue staff who were still setting out three different sorts of fork for the reception dinner. Veth’s parents had attended and sat stiffly in the back, self-exiled, and they left early anyway, but none of her brothers had even bothered to respond to the invitation she dutifully sent them, and in her speech when she looked around the room she felt their absence, the obvious, awkward space they weren’t occupying. 

Yeza, in his speech, called her beautiful. 

Veth had her dress made by Jester, who was only fifteen back then, but who was already wonderful with her needlework and a fixture of the community centre Veth still volunteers at. When she saw it she cried, a few weeks before the wedding, and when she put it on the morning of, and Jester helped her sew up the few remaining stitches with a darning needle hanging out of her mouth, she felt like she was cracking through her second skin. When Yeza saw her coming up the aisle - and the aisle was a rolled-out length of red carpet from the venue, wet and brown with mud as the snow turned to rain - and Veth’s makeup was already ruined with the tears and the weather and her nose was red with the biting wind - and her hands were shaking so hard the bouquet made this rattling, dry noise as the flower stems grated against one another - and when Yeza saw her his mouth dropped open, like a character. Like Veth was worth the breath she took away. 

When they did their vows, Veth forgot hers, and Yeza’s stammer returned, and both of them gave up halfway through and kissed too early. She put her hands in the pocket of his suit just to warm up. 

And the party was _wonderful._ They hired a band, also from the community centre, and Jester came for the first few hours of the party and danced up a storm with her hands flung out and her eyes closed and jewellery hanging from her horns. Yeza and Veth did their first dance. They whirled around the polished wood dancefloor, Yeza a little shorter than her with his slim hands on her hips, and both of them were so drunk on anxiety and prosecco that they tripped over Veth’s train and burst into giggles. The feeling of it? It felt like being in the sky. It felt like flying. It felt like coming home. 

“That’s beautiful,” Caleb says, and turns and coughs, a hacking, grating cough that lasts for a frighteningly long time, “I’m sorry - I’m sorry. I’m happy you felt that. You deserved to - _deserve_ to-”

When Veth returns after lunch, a period of an hour or two, Caleb is gone again. Velcro straps, sweat-soaked hair, eyes blank, open, vacant, staring into the sky, his vision stopped by the speckled grey roof. 

She sits there until five, until the shop closes, and then she goes home and kisses Yeza and holds her son and wonders what’s going to happen. 

“Long-term recovery unit,” says Cara, one of the newer social workers to buzz around the ward, “Other individuals from the house have been moved there. Br-”

“Caleb,” Beau and Veth say in unison - 

“Caleb,” Cara repeats, and rubs her elbow, “He’ll do better in a unit with a sense of stability. This ward is for immediate dangers, and I think with the work you’ve done with him, Veth, he’s ready to move to a recovery unit with clerics who would best understand him.”

“He’s recovering just fine here, though,” Beau says with her eyes narrowed. 

Veth inhales, and tries to work out why that thought frightens her so much. “I have a friend,” she says, as though her and Caduceus have discussed this at length, “He’s a therapist. A counselor. If Caleb recovers enough to - to talk about long-term recovery, what if he stayed with him?”

Cara blinks at her. “Uh-”

Because Caleb is funny, when he’s occupying his own head long enough to know where he is. His memory is almost perfect once he recovers it, and he asks Veth about Luc and Yeza every day, pushes her to go home when the shop closes, tells her to give them his salutations - he asks her about troubling potions and alchemical solutions she’s been working on, and he never forgets again. When Beau and Caleb are together they regress, both of them, into five year old rivals, and start throwing paper towels at each other and calling each other names, and often Beau will get out her phone and they’ll look at stupid videos she’s saved, things she’s been sent by Jester or Yasha, and Caleb will laugh and if his hands are unrestrained he will hit her, very, very softly on the shoulder. 

Because Caleb is Veth’s _friend._

Caduceus visits almost as often as Veth does, but in the off-hours, the long dark times between shop closing and opening, the times when Veth is lying in bed with Yeza, her head on her husband’s shoulder, thinking about nothing while she strokes his knuckles. She asks him why. Caduceus shrugs. “I like him. He makes me laugh. He’s smart.”

Veth doesn’t ask him about the spare room she knows he has, but Caduceus isn’t stupid, and he knows how recovery and shit - he knows how it all works, and he’s bound to have predicted something inside his head, a long arcing path of possibilities for the future. “I’m going back tonight,” he says, and his great big paw pats her shoulder, “Stay at home tomorrow, Veth. Luc needs it as much as you do.”

Guilty, she does. 

“...Playing games by the fire. I’m the middle child, and they all still live on my parent’s land. I’m the only one that moved to the city.”

The sound of rustling fabric. A cough. “Do you miss it? It sounds… wonderful.”

“Oh, I miss it plenty, when I’m sad,” Caduceus says, “But I’m doing good work, here. My parents wouldn’t be angry with me if I came home, if I couldn’t handle the distance, but they would be confused… We were raised to do good works in Melora’s name, and all that presents as different things for different folks. My older brother, he spent years away, doing missions for Melora, and I suppose I’ll go back in time, revive myself a little, refresh myself, but I have work still to do here, and I have friends. I’m happy.”

“Tell me about them, please,” Caleb says. His voice is very faint. Over the night, Veth’s been informed, he had another dissociative episode and subsequent panic attack, and had to have a blood transfusion of some sort or other, and the ward clerics are lingering around looking particularly exhausted today. 

“Don’t tell him I came by,” she whispers to one of the nurses, “He’ll be fine.”

She drives back home, and helps Yeza in the shop all day, and doesn’t feel the lack of seeing Caleb, and Yeza doesn’t comment. She gets a voice note from Caduceus around eleven at night - he doesn’t have the hang of texting, never will - where he just says, “Thanks for letting me do that, Veth. Appreciate it.” 

Fjord is introduced to Caleb around the same time Beau is, but where Beau quickly becomes a fixture in Caleb’s day-to-day through sheer force of personality, Fjord is slower to come around. He’s a graduate student up at the university, and he’s awfully busy, and Veth doesn’t even realise he’s coming to the hospital of his own accord until he walks in one day with a brown paper bag and two plastic-covered cups from McDonalds. “Veth!” He says, like he’s been caught stealing sweets, “I - uh-”

 _“Hallo,_ Fjord,” Caleb smiles at him. Someone has tied his hair behind his head and he looks better now, more purposeful, although his face is still gaunt and hollow, “I did not think I’d see you today.”

Veth grins at Fjord, and pats the back of Caleb’s hand. “Thought they had you on a diet, Cay.”

Caleb grimaces at the nickname - Veth has been experimenting with a variety of terrible names, each more childish than the last - and shrugs. His wrists are free today, but his forearms are freshly bandaged. “They did. They do. But I am not so bad as I was last week, even.”

“It’s only brown sugar cookies,” Fjord says, and even though he’s blushing bright green he drops into the chair on the opposite side of Caleb’s bed, “And coke.”

“Sugar free,” Caleb says. 

“Sugar free,” Fjord hands him the smaller cup, and an unpackaged paper straw, “Y’know, for rowing club.” And he must have come straight _from_ the rowing club; he’s wearing a sports jersey, with _Stone 15_ embroidered on the chest. “Sorry, Veth, I woulda brought you some if I thought you’d be here.”

“It was only five minutes. I’ve got to mind Luc this afternoon,” Veth checks the clock and, with mild alarm, realises that she’ll be late to lift him from nursery if she doesn't hurry, “Try not to corrupt him, you,” and with a pat to Fjord’s knee she’s scurrying out of the room -

Just in time to hear Caleb’s laughter, like the sun behind clouds after a rainstorm, and the sound of Fjord wheezing and saying, “So, you wanna know what happened _after_ we realised we’d left the key back at the dorms? Oh, fuck me, it was the worst…”

And she smiles. 

Life continues. Weeks turn into a month.

“I’ve offered Caleb my spare room,” Caduceus says, during family dinner, almost a month to the day since Veth was first called by the hospital. This week it’s at Veth’s house, with Luc trapped between Veth and Yeza and trying to throw bits of his meal at Beau, with Jester and Yasha sitting beside one another talking about acrylic paints and Van Gogh, with Caduceus at the bottom of the table sitting on the floor (halfling furniture couldn’t hope to squeeze him into it), with Fjord stuffing his face with meat as though he isn’t a perfectly capable cook. 

“Oh, good,” Yeza says, laying butter on his slice of bread until one is almost as thick as the other, “That’ll be nice for you.”

Veth’s mouth drops open, and then her smile collects in the corner of her lips without any control from her at all. _“Really?”_

“He’s plateauing in hospital,” Caduceus says serenely, but he’s smiling at her, and Beau’s fist is pumping the air, “He’s physically as recovered as he’ll ever be, and all the hospital is doing is, kinda, reminding him of his hours immediately after admission. You know? I was talking to his social workers, and I suggested that, and they said… Well, they said you’d suggested me, actually.”

“Um.” Veth flushes. “I had.”

“So he’s living with Deucey? _Awesome,”_ Beau says with her mouth stuffed full of stew, “That’s fucking great. I wanna buy him clothes. How much fun would that be?”

Jester claps her hands under her chin, beaming. “I can do it! We can get to know one another!”

“Are you okay with that?” Veth asks Caduceus, as Yasha reminds Beau not to swear around kids, as Jester and Beau start brainstorming colour palettes and outfit ideas, “I’m sorry. I should have said something to you sooner. I just… I don’t want to leave him there. Y’know?”

“I do know,” Caduceus looks solemn, which is an odd look on his round, furry features, “And he’s… I don’t think he’s ever going to be whoever he was when you knew each other. He’s not going to… He’s told me some things. Quite a lot of things. But I don’t think he’s told me everything, and some of the things made him react quite… Violently, sometimes, and other times it was…”

“He goes away,” Beau offers. She looks serious, too, and it’s strange for someone as light as her - as _fun_ as her. “He - doesn’t tell me things, not like he talks to you two, but he goes away.”

Fjord says nothing, but he nods. 

Caduceus spreads his hands. “And that is something I have _genuine_ experience in treating. I don’t think… if Caleb was bigger, maybe I would recommend the recovery clinic. But he… I’m a big guy. He can’t hurt himself if I’m there. I have big ears,” and to demonstrate he puts his paws behind them and flaps them, and it makes Luc giggle, “And I’ll hear it. It isn’t like anyone was using my room, anyway.”

“Someone’s gotta tell him, then,” Fjord says, mopping up the remainder of his stew with a slice of bread, “I don’t wanna be it.”

“I’ll do it,” Veth says. Under the table, Yeza’s hand rests on her thigh, a comforting presence no matter what she’s done, “I’ll go see him tomorrow.”

She must be imagining it, but she can see a space growing between Fjord and Caduceus, a gap at the table that should be filled by a body, as though they’re all just coming to realise what they’ve been missing. Jester is humming a song, talking about her mother, about how Marion came to the door to get the grocery delivery instead of waiting for her to do it, and Caduceus is reassuring her about how meaningful the move is, and Fjord is staring off into space, his cheeks a little greener than usual, and Beau and Yasha are kicking each other under the table. 

Yeza presses his hand into her leg. “I love you, honey,” he tells her, as though she doesn’t know. 

Veth puts her head on his shoulder, and Luc wraps his little arms around her waist. “I love you, too.”

When she tells Caleb, he just stares at her for a long ten seconds, and then starts to stammer. 

“Don’t be an idiot. We love you,” she says. 

“That easy,” he looks as though someone has knocked him over. He looks sick. He looks better than he did. 

“That easy,” she confirms, and climbs up onto his bed and holds his hand, runs her dark thumb over his cut, fragile knuckles, “It’s all that easy.”

And it is. 

One day she meets Fjord with a hammer, price sticker still attached, a drill still in the plastic protective box, and a little paper booklet called _Welding, Washers, and Ways to DIY Your Home._ “I said I’d help,” he says defensively, his blush travelling all the way down his neck and under the collar of his shirt, “I told him-”

“I am _not_ getting involved in whatever you tell Caleb when you’re alone,” Veth says, grinning, enjoying watching Fjord squirm. She pats him on the elbow and sidesteps, heading back down the street towards her own shop, towards Yeza and Luc and the other side of her family, “But let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

His protests fly over her, ignored, and Veth laughs so loudly that people on the other side of the street turn, wondering what the joke was. 

Veth Brenatto, née Smyth, has worked hard for the things she has now in life. She fought hard for her husband until she knew she had him, and she battled for her son until she felt him a weight in her arms, and she whittled away at her best friend until she saw him smile again. 

Caleb is curled up on the long sofa in her house, a glass of wine in his steady hand, Luc lying against his side, half-asleep. _Robin Hood_ is on the TV, and the little animals are all singing a song, and Yeza is snoring in the easy chair with his slippers hanging off his toes. Caleb drinks, carefully, his arm manoeuvring around Luc, his long sleeves tight and buttoned around the cuffs so they never slip down the forearm, a watch on his right wrist that beeps when his heart beats too fast, his hair washed and braided down his neck, his cheeks dusted with sun-kissed freckles. 

“Do you want a refill?” Veth says, and shakes her glass at him. It’s almost late enough at night that time stops mattering; she’s been living in this second for years, now, and intends to continue.

He smiles at her. His eyes are shiny and bright. “You know you’re my best friend, Veth Brenatto.”

“Idiot,” she says, her throat closed up tight, “Let me get you another drink.”

He kisses her on the cheek when she comes to collect his glass, and his lips are soft and healed and his breath smells of wine and mint, and when she pulls away his smile is true. “Let me be the embarrassing one, for once.”

“I’ve never been embarrassed by you,” she says, and kisses him right back again, “You’re my best friend, too, stupid. Do you want more wine or not?”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! my tumblr is softlyblues, and if you enjoyed please consider commenting/leaving kudos!


End file.
